AT&T’s $T CEO spent September telling everyone $SPCX Starlink’s mobile plan was “not a viable strategy.”
His exact words: satellite solves the last 2%, not the 98%. It can’t penetrate buildings. Small cells won’t fix it. It would cost as much as building a macro network. “A whole bunch of reasons why that won’t effectively work.”
Then SpaceX bought nationwide 800 MHz low-band spectrum today. The exact band Stankey himself admitted gets decent penetration into buildings.
The one he said satellite doesn’t have.
Then the FCC cleared 15,000 Starlink Mobile satellites at 330 km, up to 150 Mbps per user, with a waiver letting SpaceX sell service on spectrum it owns instead of leasing from a carrier.
Then, on October 1, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon launched a joint venture to blanket US dead zones with satellites. Their own words: pooling spectrum, common standards, direct-to-device.
So the timeline is: “not viable” in September. “We need satellites too” in October. Same month.
Stankey also said fiber is three times faster than satellite and nothing beats it. True. Fiber also doesn’t fit in your pocket. Nobody is choosing between a fiber line and a phone plan.
The 2% he dismissed is a $200B+ market. And the company he called non-viable just bought the spectrum layer he said it was missing.
Meanwhile the stock is in free fall down over 10%